Atom Treaty Imprisons Sakharov, Soviets Say

July 18, 1985|By Chicago Tribune.

WASHINGTON — An official of the Soviet Academy of Sciences told Sen. Paul Simon (D., Ill.) during a recent visit to Moscow that dissident scientist Andrei Sakharov would not be allowed to leave the country because his emigration would violate the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, Simon said Wednesday.

Sakharov, 63, was ``internally`` exiled to the city of Gorky more than five years ago for his activities against the Soviet regime. Human-rights activists have pressed for his release. Sakharov also has asked permission for his wife, Yelena Bonner, to travel to the West for treatment of serious medical problems.

Bonner, who was permitted to travel to Italy for eye treatments several years ago, has been serving an exile sentence in Gorky for the last year since she was convicted of anti-Soviet slander.

Simon and an assistant went to Moscow last week to meet with Anatoly Petrovich Aleksandrov, president of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, Simon told reporters during a briefing on his trip Wednesday.

He said the session opened with complaints from Aleksandrov about President Reagan`s ``Star Wars`` missile-defense project, to which Simon responded with complaints about Soviet human-rights abuses.

``They started out on `Star Wars,` and I started out on human rights, and then Aleksandrov brought up Sakharov and said, `We can`t let him leave the country because it would be a violation of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty,` `` Simon said.

``He was dead serious, and it was one of those things that I couldn`t hardly believe what I was hearing,`` Simon said.

Apparently the rationale was that because Sakharov, a physicist, had played a role in development of Soviet nuclear weapons, his emigration could amount to an export of Soviet weapons-making technology.

Simon said he has raised the Sakharov issue before with Soviet authorities, but their usual response is that Sakharov cannot leave the country because he has secret information about nuclear weapons.

In a diplomatic cable to Washington describing the meeting, U.S. Embassy officials said Aleksandrov`s comments ``can only be characterized as bizarre.`` A Soviet specialist in Washington said it was the first time he had heard a Soviet official cite the 1968 Nonproliferation Treaty as a reason not to allow Sakharov to travel to the West.

``Simon expressed disbelief, but Alexandrov continued and said that Sakharov was privy to all nuclear secrets related to construction of nuclear weapons,`` said one of Simon`s assistants. ``If he were allowed to emigrate, he could give this knowledge to other countries or groups.``

Simon said citing the Nonproliferation Treaty in this case was

``ludicrous,`` but that the Soviets did so might mean they are going to take a different tack on the question of Sakharov.

Soviet authorities sent Sakharov to Gorky, 250 miles from Moscow, five years ago in an attempt to sever his contacts with Western reporters. The move followed several years of arrests and trials that sent many other Moscow dissidents to jail or into exile. Gorky is off-limits to Western journalists. For several years, Bonner carried regular reports back to Moscow about her husband`s condition. A little more than a year ago, Sakharov was said to have begun a hunger strike to force authorities to give his wife a travel permit so she could be treated for a heart condition.

Shortly after that, Bonner was arrested and convicted of anti-Soviet slander and she, too, was restricted to Gorky.